Carrier route record

DLSJC→LAX

Delta Air Lines · San Jose to Los Angeles

Flights: 649
Period: September 2025 to August 2026
Share of route: 15%
Carriers: 6

Historical statistics for September 2025 to August 2026, not live status. For today’s flights, check with Delta Air Lines.

Delta on SJC to LAX earns an A. Close to nine flights in ten arrive inside the 15-minute window the DOT uses to define an on-time arrival, which puts it 14 points better than the national rate of 77.3%. When something does go wrong the average delay runs about an hour. That rests on 649 flights. The strongest carrier on the route with a full sample, SkyWest Airlines, flew 1,809 at 91.7% on time.

Set against the rest of the country, Delta's SJC to LAX record is 14 points better than the US average of 77.3%. That gap is worth roughly 143 fewer late arrivals for every thousand flights.

On time

91.6%

Arrivals under 15 minutes late, of 634 completed flights

Avg delay

57 min

Across delayed arrivals only, not all flights

Cancelled

2.31%

National rate is 1.89%

Whole route

85.0%

Every carrier on SJC to LAX, 4,470 flights

These figures cover 649 flights between September 2025 and August 2026. The median arrival is 18 minutes early, which is the part an average hides: most flights here are fine, and the on-time rate is decided by a tail of badly late ones. On-time means under 15 minutes late, the DOT's own threshold.

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Carrier by carrier

Delta against every carrier on SJC to LAX

Delta flew 649 of the 4,470 flights on SJC to LAX, about 15% of it. Its 91.6% on time is 7 points better than the route as a whole, which runs 85.0%. Ranked by on-time rate it is number three of six carriers on the route, where the range runs from United at 100.0% to American at 66.7%. Three of those carriers flew fewer than 365 flights here, so treat their positions as rough.

The choice of carrier is not cosmetic here. SkyWest Airlines arrives on time 91.7% of the time; Southwest Airlines manages 76.8%. Sample sizes sit next to every figure, because a two-point gap across 1,867 flights means less than a ten-point one.

On-time performance by carrier on SJC to LAX
Airline	Flights	On time	Avg delay	Cancelled	Grade
United Airlinesthin sample	1	100.0%	—	0.00%	A+
SkyWest Airlines	1,809	91.7%	76 min	0.44%	A+
Delta Air Lines (this page)	649	91.6%	57 min	2.31%	A
Southwest Airlines	1,867	76.8%	47 min	0.64%	B+
Frontier Airlinesthin sample	138	75.8%	43 min	4.35%	B−
American Airlinesthin sample	6	66.7%	29 min	0.00%	C+

The spread between SkyWest and Southwest is 15 points, wide enough that it should decide the booking. On a hundred trips that is 15 more arrivals inside the on-time window.

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Departure window

When Delta runs best on this route

Departure time is the single lever a traveller controls, and it moves the odds more than most people expect. Each bar below is the on-time rate for flights scheduled to leave inside that window, across 649 flights.

5am–8am153 flights91.5%
8am–11am84 flights92.4%
11am–2pm117 flights93.9%
2pm–5pm60 flights91.1%
5pm–8pm214 flights90.5%
8pm–5am21 flights—

Scale runs 80% to 100%. Rows with fewer than 30 flights show a dash.

The time of day barely matters here. The 11am–2pm window tops the set at 93.9% and 5pm–8pm sits at 90.5%, 3 points apart across 649 flights. Pick the departure that suits the trip: whatever is going wrong here is not accumulating over the course of the day. The 5pm–8pm window is the busiest, with 214 flights scheduled in it.

Across the year

Delta on SJC to LAX through the year

Jan–Mar 2026168 flights88.9%
Apr–Jun 2026286 flights94.2%
Jul–Sep 2026195 flights90.2%

Scale runs 80% to 100%.

Monthly volumes are too low here to break the year into twelve reliable readings. What the twelve-month total says is 91.6% on time across 649 flights.

Quarter by quarter Delta on SJC to LAX held fairly steady: 88.9% in Jan–Mar 2026, 94.2% in Apr–Jun 2026 and 90.2% in Jul–Sep 2026. A spread of 5 points is about what a sample of this size moves on its own, so the annual figure is a fair summary.

Across the week, Tuesday is the strongest day at 95.4% on time and Wednesday the weakest at 86.5%, a spread of 9 points.

Arrival by arrival

How late Delta on SJC to LAX runs when it is late

Delta on SJC to LAX often beats the schedule: 395 of 634 completed flights, 62%, arrived 15 minutes or more early. The 53 late arrivals split 12 under half an hour, 26 between 30 and 60 minutes, and 15 an hour or more.

15+ min early395 flights62.3%
Within 15 min186 flights29.3%
15–29 min late12 flights1.9%
30–59 min late26 flights4.1%
1–2 hours late9 flights1.4%
2+ hours late6 flights0.9%

Scale runs 0% to 100%.

Share of 634 completed flights by arrival against schedule.

Time lost at the gate mostly stays lost. Of 45 departures that left 15 minutes late or more, only 5 made it up before arrival. 13 flights left on time and still arrived late.

The worst days

Worst days for Delta on SJC to LAX

The latest arrival of the period was on 8 August 2026, 2 hours 45 minutes behind schedule; most of its delay minutes were filed as a late-arriving aircraft. Three of the five worst days fell in August 2026.

The latest arrivals of Delta on SJC to LAX in the period
Date	Arrived late by	Largest filed cause
8 August 2026	2 hours 45 minutes	Late-arriving aircraft
9 August 2026	2 hours 45 minutes	Carrier
19 August 2026	2 hours 26 minutes	Carrier
13 March 2026	2 hours 24 minutes	Carrier
9 July 2026	2 hours 10 minutes	Carrier

Delay causes

Why Delta runs late on this route

Late-arriving aircraft accounts for 54% of the 3,021 delay minutes carriers reported here, and the remaining four split what is left.

Late-arriving aircraft
54%
Carrier
28%
National Airspace System
18%

54% of delay minutes trace back to a late-arriving aircraft, meaning the plane was already behind before it got here. Across 3,021 reported delay minutes here, that single category outweighs weather by 54 to one. The split is drawn from 3,021 reported delay minutes.

Cancellations sit at 2.31% against a national 1.89%, which is ordinary. Diversions add another 0.00%.

Connections and stage length

What a delay here costs

Badly late arrivals are rare here: only 2.4% land an hour or more behind schedule, against 8.3% nationally. Connections built on this flight are about as safe as US domestic connections get, though a cancelled flight still ignores every layover you give it.

At 308 miles this is a short hop, and stage length matters more than it looks. A flight this short spends under two hours in the air, which leaves almost nothing to claw back a late pushback with. Delay here is decided on the ground, in the turn, which is why the 11am–2pm window matters as much as it does.

The return leg is a different operation and performs like one: it runs 86.9% on time across 650 flights, 5 points below this direction. Departure banks, aircraft rotations and the congestion at each end all differ, so scoring the two directions together would average away a real 5 points of difference.

One caution: this is a thin sample. 649 flights over twelve months is enough to clear this site's floor but not enough to pin the rate down tightly, and a single bad week moves it by more than a point. Treat the grade as a rough reading.

What to do with this

Booking Delta on SJC to LAX

Put together: treat all of this as provisional. 649 flights over twelve months is enough to clear this site's floor and not enough to be confident to better than a couple of points. The 91.6% headline is the most reliable number on the page; the hour and month splits below it are built on a few dozen flights each. 634 completed flights over 12 months sit behind that.

Where to go next

Source: US DOT Bureau of Transportation Statistics, on-time performance data, September 2025 to August 2026. Last updated 22 October 2026; recomputed monthly. How this data is collected.

Key figures